Simon Bowkett's Podcast

1 John 5:6-12 Which of these many 'voices' to listen to

June 25, 2022 Simon Bowkett
Simon Bowkett's Podcast
1 John 5:6-12 Which of these many 'voices' to listen to
Show Notes Transcript

         •       Introduction

We live in a world full of contradictory voices that would lead us in one direction or another.

It is essential to Christian faith to know what to do with them, because if you get this wrong you will hit navigational error, and navigational errors very often lead to shipwrecks.

Now, where does THAT come from in this passage, which has got some lovely sounding but very confusing bits in it?

Well, forgive me if I say something that sounds a bit obvious here, but the key to understanding what vv. 6-12 of 1 John 5 are all about … is that verse 6 follows on from v. 5.

I know this is at first sight a confusing, though important sounding, passage of Scripture.

And when you are faced with something like that you can either swim around in the words not getting very far, or you can pick out the nice sounding bits (assuming you’ve actually grasped what those tender nuggets are all about) … or you can take a step back, look at the background this message in the text is coming from, and if you do that then I reckon you are going to get somewhere with it.

So, let’s first get confused, then step back in two specific and universally important directions, and then get to grips with what John is actually telling us here.

Let’s get started by sowing a little confusion.

1 John 5:6-12

“This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Now before you start thinking ‘Right, I’ve got that last bit’ and flee the early bits to take refuge there … let’s just hold on and take those steps back in two different directions.

Firstly, what’s the context?

John is addressing a set of small house churches in the wider Ephesus area where errant voices have been raised and the genuine believers there are in danger of being led astray into ways that will significantly affect their spiritual lives … there are ERRANT voices, there is ERRONEOUS testimony in their ball park.

Ah.

False testimony that will damage their spiritual lives.

We really need to be able to question the validity of the testimony we’re prepared to accept, whether that’s in legal evidence, reading the newspaper or … sitting in the gatherings of God’s people.

John is going to be addressing that very issue.

And our second step back is to look then not so much at the context … the setting in life … as the cotext(not a typo.) … the text surrounding the passage we are looking at.

In this case we need to notice that v. 6 follows immediately on from v. 5.

What is v. 5 about?

Before John tackles this whole matter of evaluating the testimony you receive he is asserting that:

“This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

The context and the context here, then, are teaching us that:

A. We must NOT just listen to whatever claims to be Christian testimony and SOUNDS good, but check it out and evaluate it.

B. A leading criterion for checking out testimony is God’s TRUTH!

In this case, the truth highlighted is that exclusive faith in Jesus as the Son of God (which carries with that all the Old Testament told us about the One Who was coming and all the consequences of His person for believing what He said … if He is God the Son then when He speaks out you sit up and you LISTEN to Him!)

There is an alarming tendency going around in the Llandovery area at the moment … but it’s not a new one … which has I think arisen consciously or otherwise from the teaching of Stuart Bell … to deny the importance of truth to faith. 

It says, ‘I don’t want doctrine because that sounds unkind, I just want feelings and nice actions, not believing things’.

Now, I put it like that to flag up the issue.

It won’t be expressed like that, but that is the underlying situation we’re dealing with … and as gently and kindly as we can, because people are fragile and often hurting, we need to unpack that.

It is flagging up the importance of evaluating testimony and adhering to truth John is dealing with, because it MATTERS … and he’ll get to showing that by the time that we reach v. 12.

         •       1. Types of testimony, vv. 6-8

In pursuing his broader concerns for the pastoral context and doing that in the context we looked at last time, John sets out first of all some types of testimony to the Gospel.

“This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. 

He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. 

And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”

Oh MY … what’s he trying to say here?!

Well, there is a LOT of discussion about that in the commentaries and I’m going to try to chart a path through it here because this isn’t the place to get bogged down!

Who is it who overcomes the pressures of this world as they seek to live here for the Lord?

John asked that in v. 5a and answered it in v. 5b “the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

Now John goes on to enlarge what that entails in v. 6

““This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. 

He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.”

This looks like a correctional statement aimed at some error the people he was warning about were perpetrating.

John is a great one for symbols, for painting pictures with words, and in John’s Gospel water has a standing association with the Holy Spirit.

So, in John 4 Jesus promises ‘living water’ to those who would believe in Him.

Then in John 7:37-39 John explicitly identifies ‘living water’ as the Spirit Who would be given to believers after Jesus was glorified.

The point being made is that Jesus didn’t come ONLY by water but ALSO by the blood.

This ‘coming’ seems to connote Christ’s coming to save, and there’s a load of Greek grammar going on there in this verse to say that (here’s Karen Jobes summing it all up) “the salvific mission of Jesus as achieved both by water and by blood, not by water alone.”

So the point is that John is tying the presence and work of the Holy Spirit Who is the witness to the truth in the Church to the saving death of Jesus and (of course) His resurrection.

In other words, John seems to be arguing that there is no testimony from the Spirit that ignores or contradicts the atoning death of Jesus, nor the truth attested at the water when Christ was baptised about His identity … the descending dove and the voice from Heaven had declared there ‘this is my beloved Son, with Whom I am well-pleased, listen to Him’.

We don’t know exactly what the false teachers afflicting the churches around Ephesus were saying, but these matters were very likely involved in what the false teachers were saying.

So given what he was having to contend with in the false teachers around Ephesus, John is upholding the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the Church’s and in the believer’s life while also holding that the historical Jesus (baptised by John at the Jordan and attested there in His historic earthly life and ministry) Is essential to the Christian life.

While the Spirit is necessary for salvation, the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, so His role is always coupled with and anchored in the earthly life of Jesus Christ, sent by the Father as the atoning sacrifice for sin.

Yes, the Spirit continues to speak to the Church, but His witness is always one that makes much of the truth of the historical Jesus, the Biblically orthodox teaching of the identity of Christ and the atonement He brought about through His death on the Cross and His physical resurrection.

So, any truth claim apart from the truth of Christ’s real and historic incarnation, His atonement and resurrection, or rather that doesn’t focus on these things, cannot be of the Spirit of God.

Having established that, John now moves on to summarise the testimony and draw a conclusion about it’s quality …

          2. Quality of testimony, v. 9

V. 9 “We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.”

This is what’s called a ‘first class condition’ or ‘a condition of fact’ which states the idea that human testimony is accepted routinely as one of our sources of what constitutes a fact.

In the broadest of terms, we can know something 

·       by personal experience, 

·       by logical inference or 

·       by believing what someone else tells us.

Those are, as it were, the gateways to acceptance of a truth.

We do very commonly receive human testimony as credible, so (John says) how much more willing should one be in principle to accept the testimony of the all-knowing God?

But there’s more here to strengthen the accreditation of this testimony, because John tells us that this testimony is God’s testimony about His Son.

THIS is the testimony, the testimony of God about Jesus at His baptism, that John testifies to in his Gospel as an eye-witness of the events, and that he reiterates in the first chapter: 

1 John 1:1-3 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

THERE is the APOSTOLIC testimony which has been communicated from God via the apostles and is being opposed by the people seeking to mislead the churches around Ephesus.

What is implied by denying this apostolic teaching then?

John throws this in as almost an aside … but it strikes home as being of very great importance …

3. Aside: Making God out to be a liar, v. 10

V. 10 “Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.”

In the first place, authentic believers believe this body of Divine truth that has come from God via the apostles who were inspired by God to preach and write it.

There is NO room for dividing authentic faith and sound doctrine on these essential issues.

That IS the first thing in this v. 10.

But the second thing is this (and it is powerful!)

This testimony to the truth is characterised by the fact that it is not human testimony to the truth but GOD’s testimony to the truth, and failing to believe that IS making God out to be a liar:

“Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.”

No matter how slick, or nice-sounding, or clever a preacher is (John is saying) if he doesn’t stick by the testimony to truth John is witnessing to them, that person is nevertheless making out the God Whose testimony this is … to be a liar.

What does it TAKE to put yourself in the precarious position of trying to call the God of the Bible out to be a liar?

“ … because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.”

That is pretty powerful stuff, but this is the second time John talks about making God out to be a liar.

The first occasion in 1 John 1:10 involves denying personal sin.

Now here this second time the point being made is that when someone rejects God’s love offered in Christ in favour of some other belief system (including non-belief!), they are implicitly declaring that they know better than God, thus trying to make out He’s a liar when He gives the testimony John’s been talking about.

What IS that testimony John?

4. The content of THE Testimony, v. 11

V. 11 “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

There is surely no bigger problem on the list of human issues than this issue of the impending death of every human … it is (quite literally) the ultimate issue!

But God’s testimony addresses the biggest human problem HEAD ON!

Yes, our eternal destiny beyond this life is the big one … the one we all have to face and the one that no human, earthly privilege or material advantage can raise a finger to lift from us.

But the testimony of God, the Apostolic message and the Gospel is that God has GIVEN us ETERNAL life … and this life is in His Son.

In the water and the blood and the Spirit … all testifying together to the way back to God from the dark paths of sin; to the door that is OPEN, and you may go in.

At Calvary’s Cross is where you begin …

When you come as a sinner to Jesus.

Trusting such testimony, then finally, has CONSEQUENCES.

5. Consequences of trust in THE testimony, v. 12

V. 12 “Whoever has the Son has life; 

whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

At first sight the expression: ‘The one who has the Son’ might look a bit odd.

How can you possess the Son?

Well, that expression “to have the Son” here in 1 John 5:12 means to “possess” him in the sense that he is present in the individual’s life (see 1 John 2:23 for the use of the Greek verb “to have” to indicate possession of a divine reality). 

From the parallel statement in 1 John 5:10a, it is clear that believing in the Son and thus having God’s testimony in one’s self is the same as “having” the Son here in 5:12a. 

This is essentially identical to John 3:16: “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Then in contrast, John states the opposite side of the coin in the second part of the verse: ““the one who does not have the Son does not have (eternal) life.”

That’s presented as a universal truth there, but this negative statement in 5:12b very likely reflects the author’s evaluation of the opponents: 

The opponents, in spite of their claims to know God, do not possess (nor have they at any time possessed, cf. 2:19) eternal life.

The implication then is obvious: ‘so why are you listening to them?!’

This issue of believing the testimony about Jesus is pretty crucial.

Eternal life hangs or drops from it.

V. 12 “Whoever has the Son has life; 

Great!

But the corollary is also true:

“… whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

You need both sides of the coin in view, is what John seems to be saying.

Conclusion

John is making it absolutely clear to his readers that where salvation is concerned the central truths really matter … and those truths are the ones testified to by the historical events of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, especially His death on the Cross … and these are all revealed and applied by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life as the apostolic testimony is declared and embraced.

You cannot have this fine-sounding tosh that declares: 

"Preach the Gospel and if necessary, use words" 

Do you know what?

Not even Francis of Assisi who that quote is often ascribed to actually ever said that!

And the Bible does not teach that. 

It does NOT say: ‘just show people your life’. 

It says: show them Jesus, His person, historical life and atoning death-defeating death (and resurrection), passing on the Apostolic testimony in the life of the Spirit.

The message is that the authentic Jesus, proclaimed in the power and enjoyed in the presence of the Spirit along with His atoning death and resurrection are the gateway to the only way to be put right with and to live right with God.

But whoever does NOT have the Son does NOT have life.

You can’t just say ‘you have your truth, I have mine’ … not in the light of 1 John 5, you can’t.

Now, of COURSE we live in a world full of contradictory voices … and as we said at the outset, it is essential to Christian faith to know what to do with them, because if you get this wrong you will hit navigational error, and navigational errors very often lead to shipwrecks.

John was very clear at the start of chapter 4:

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”

He develops in the passage we’ve been looking at today HOW we should evaluate the quality of the testimony that we hear from these various voices, these various ‘spirits’ that have gone out into the world.

And he has made very plain the consequences of trusting or failing to trust in THE testimony … 

In a world like ours, an information age driven hard by technology, John’s teaching about evaluating testimony about God seems to me pretty relevant for our times?